I'm ready for the pressure.
The drama and the pleasure!If there is one thing I want to see here, it's HUMOR.I believe I can fly!
I believe I can touch the sky!
I think about it every night and day!I stand in awe of my body.

I use a Rena-Cal Top Light Excel 300w heater in my 75 gallon FW community tank.

2.5 to 5 watts per gallon is a good rule of thumb when selecting a heater. The lower wattage heater if the room temperature does not fluctuate more than 10 degrees fahrenheit. It it fluctuates more than that, then I would go with a higher wattage heater.

Another good idea is to purchase two heaters. One as a back-up that you can install if something goes wrong with the other heater.

I learned a valuable lesson years ago when I had a heater fail over a holiday and nothing was open to purchase a new heater.

As I am a very new to aquariums and have yet to purchase my first (still planning it out), I would also like some advice on a heater setup. With this post only being a few weeks old, I hope it is OK to bump this thread to the top again.

dakotagirl mentioned above that she was given the suggestion of 2 heaters, one on each end of a 55 gal tank. I too am planning a 55 gal (long) and was wondering about this just yesterday. Would it be better to have 2 heaters?

I know that it would add to the cost of the setup, but my thought was to have (2) 300 watt heaters in the tank. If one were to go bad, the other should be able to keep up with the demand until a new second one could be purchased and installed. But that brings up another question. How would I know if one were to go bad?

I would use a 300 watt as there is no price diff between that and 250watt and it would cope a little easier...It would also depend on where you stay, if you lived where I do you would probably need two heaters as the temp at night is very cold at the moment and one heater struggles on a large tank

Where I am located is cold. Night before last it was about 15F/-9C here. However, I have a natural gas furnace and central air (in warmer months) which keeps the air temperature where I intend to place my aquarium at about 74F/23C. Granted, either of the two systems (heat/ac) could go out at any time.

In wet/dry filtration the heaters and thermostats are typically placed in the sump.

If you have another type of filtration the heaters are typically placed remote from each other in the tank and vertically separated from the filtration intake.

TR

Thanks for your input! I think I will start out with a single unit to help reduce the initial cost and then possibly add a second unit later. Was just thinking of having it set 1 or 2 degrees cooler than the first in case the one fails. I am one of those that tends to err on the side of caution and having a backup already in place will make me feel a bit better.